"Well, that went considerably better than any of us had any right to expect," Lucifer observed as he joined Chloe by the living room window and pressed a cold bottle of beer into her hand. The apartment was quiet now; it had been decided that Dan and Trixie needed time together, and so Chloe had steeled herself, gritted her teeth, and allowed her daughter out of her sight as she left to go sleep at her dad's. Linda and Maze had left together, probably to head for Lux to talk and drink out a fairly high-stress afternoon. And Lucifer was still here. Chloe wasn't quite sure why, but he was, and she didn't have it in her to tell him to go. Better the devil she knew than an apartment full of silence.

"I think he'll be okay," Chloe agreed. She took a swig of the beer and held it in her mouth awhile before she swallowed, letting the carbonation and the alcohol gently burn against her tongue. "He's been through Hell these last few months, and I wasn't there for him. The fact that he took all this as well as he did is . . . it's incredible."

"He knew that you were there for him, Detective," Lucifer corrected her. "You weren't here to see it, but he never lost faith in you for an instant. He knew that, however your decisions might appear, you had good reasons for making them. Hence our . . . difference of opinion. He needed someone to blame and it was unthinkable for him to blame you."

Chloe felt a sad smile tug at the corner of her mouth. "So you got to be the scapegoat again, huh?"

"In this particular instance, I accept the role gladly. I would scape a thousand goats for your sake."

Chloe snorted into the bottle and had to dab beer off her face with the back of her hand, choking more than laughing. "You'd do what?"

"That didn't quite come out the way I'd intended, but you know what I mean." With some quick sleight-of-hand, Lucifer traded her drink for his pocket square.

"I can't use this to wipe my mouth; it's silk."

"It's getting retired after this misadventure anyway, not having seen a cleaner in a week."

Chloe mopped her face with the cloth, admitting that it did smell less like starch and cologne and more like woodsmoke and musk than it probably had when he'd picked it out. It wasn't unpleasant, though. She tucked it into her sling rather than giving it back and re-accepted her beer, letting her eyes wander out the window. There wasn't much of a view from her ground-floor apartment, certainly not compared to the panorama visible from the balcony of the penthouse, but the patch of sky that she could see was ablaze in pinks and oranges as the sun headed down in the west.

"I missed this," she admitted. "California sunsets. I know the colors are from all the air pollution, and that's technically a bad thing, but I missed them anyway."

"You found beauty in something evil. It's a talent of yours."

Chloe shook her head. "I found beauty in something beautiful. That doesn't take talent."

Her gaze stole across to his face, running again across its familiar planes and angles. Fair skin or red, brown eyes or blazing ones . . . there would always be beauty in his face.

"Good and evil are too big for me," she admitted carefully. "I mean, on a heaven-or-hell scale. Thinking about them feels like opening my eyes on a merry-go-round that's spinning way too fast. I can handle what's in front of me. My family. My cases. My city. I can't clean up the air pollution, but I can appreciate the sunset."

She succumbed to temptation then, and let herself lean into him until her head was resting on the rounded, well-muscled solidity of his shoulder. She heard his breath catch and hold, as though she'd somehow hurt him. Then, carefully, hesitantly, his arm came up around her. The tips of his long fingers settled against her back, and he began to draw soothing circles through her shirt, just as he'd seen her do for Dan. Chloe could almost feel the oxytocin flooding into her brain, making her feel safe and warm and calm.

"I'm sorry," said Lucifer. "For everything. All these months. Everything I put you through. All the bits and fragments of Hell that have followed me into your life. I am so utterly sorry, Chloe."

Chloe turned her head to let her nose press into the rumpled fabric of his shirt. "I'm sorry I didn't trust you. You deserved better than that from me. You've earned better than that."

"There is nothing to forgive."

She huffed, thinking of all the things that there were for him to forgive. Then, lest they get into a tug-of-war over the blame, she changed the subject. "You've never done that before, have you?"

"What, forgive?"

"I didn't mean that. I meant what you're doing to my back."

His fingers stilled. "Why? Am I doing it wrong?"

Chloe laughed. "No. You're doing it exactly right." She rounded her back a little, pressing it into his fingertips in an invitation to continue. "You just seemed really nervous about it, that's all."

"Is it that obvious?" Lucifer asked ruefully. "No, you're right. I'm very good at violence, and very good at sex, but what you were doing to Dan when I popped in wasn't either of those things, and . . . and I don't think I've ever been quite so jealous in my life."

"Yeah, I saw your face kind of twitch there for a second. I'd reciprocate, but I've got a beer in one hand and a sling on the other, so . . . rain check?"

"I am ecstatic to receive a rain check from you, Detective. Even if we do live in Los Angeles, and it hardly ever rains." His hand wandered up until he was pressing his fingertips into the back of her neck. "And something . . . perhaps this impossibly tense muscle right here . . . suggests to me that I'm not the only nervous one. Still not quite at ease, alone with the devil?"

Chloe craned her neck, trying futilely to get the muscle to relax. "It's not that. It's Trixie. It's . . . not being able to see her, or hear her, or get to her. And it's not that I don't trust Dan; it's more basic than that."

"I understand. Viscerally. It's excruciating, feeling so much attachment to a being you know to be so fragile."

"I'd fight you on that, but I do have a broken arm, so I guess you have a point."

"What makes you so certain I was talking about you? Steinway pianos are also very fragile."

Chloe laughed, and the movement jostled her painkiller-free arm, but she was in no way interested in moving from where she stood to find a Lortab.

"Speaking of, were you planning to go home tonight, or inviting yourself to sleep on the sofa again?"

"The sofa! All those tortures available in Hell, and we never thought to compel six-foot-three-inch persons to try to sleep on five-foot sofas. Think of the lost opportunities." He craned his head down to get a look at her face, as though eager for the sight of her laughter. "I thought I'd stay until Maze got home, to be certain you've got someone to help you button your jeans in the morning. If you'll have me for that long. And if she decides to take off and warm some beautiful stranger's bed, well, I can't promise no innuendos, but I flatter myself I'd be better than showing up at the precinct in your pajamas."

Chloe was still laughing.

"Though if Maze isn't coming back, I suppose I can't ask her to bring me any clean clothes," Lucifer mused. "That plan seemed so neat when it first occurred to me."

"Although speaking of things going to Lux," Chloe put in, "I'm going to need those hospital bills back. It turns out my insurance is still in force because I'm on unpaid leave, and I think I still have a job, so I can take care of them."

"Oh, you did hear that after all, then? I thought you were in some kind of trance."

"No, I heard. I just wasn't really up to arguing about it this morning. And I had forty-five dollars to my name, so it didn't seem to matter."

Lucifer frowned. "Well, you have been on unpaid leave. So it's not like you're all that much better off this evening. So perhaps you'd better leave the hospital bill to me."

"Ha. Fat chance."

"Oh, come on, Detective! Please? I get away with spoiling you so little . . ."

"You just flew me home first-class!"

"No, I flew your daughter home first-class. I flew you home where you could see her, Detective Just-Water-For-Me-Thanks."

Chloe lifted her head and turned a little so she could look Lucifer in the eye. "Look, Lucifer . . . I think that I can handle being the devil's partner. And maybe even being the devil's best friend, if . . . if I still get to claim that title . . ."

"Yours, and none other's, Detective."

"And . . ." Words failed her here, and she let the ellipsis float between them, not ready yet to label what might be happening but unable to deny that it was. "But I draw the line," she insisted, "at being the devil's kept woman. I have got to be able to take care of myself."

"So that you can run again, if you need to." The sadness in his voice was unmistakable and heartbreaking.

"Yes," Chloe insisted, gritting her teeth a little against the flare of empathy in her chest. "So that you know that every day I stay, I'm choosing to. Freely. Because I trust you and I care about you, not because I need your money or your power. I'm not Kathy Schulze, holding onto survival at any cost. Living with the deal she made with a devil . . . a real devil."

Lucifer's eyebrows shot up. "I think," he said slowly, "that is the first time in my very long life that a person who knows my true nature has looked me in the eye and insisted that a real devil is something other than myself."

"Yeah, well." Chloe shrugged, wincing a little at the throb in her arm. "I'm calling it like I see it. So are you going to give the bills back, or are we going to argue about it some more?"

"I'll surrender them, though I want my protests noted."

"They're noted and appreciated."

The sun was gone by this time, and the living room was rapidly going dim. Chloe set her beer down on the end table and switched on the lamp, then took a seat on the couch. When Lucifer joined her, somewhat hesitantly, she settled back into the cushions, took another drink, and asked, "So what does tomorrow look like for us?"

Lucifer frowned. "How do you mean, exactly? In terms of rides, and restraining orders, and putting your disrupted life back together, or in the more . . . cosmic . . . sense?"

"Either one. Both. We've got plenty of time before Maze comes home."

Lucifer smiled, and it was one of those rare, gentle, heartbreakingly beautiful smiles. "No amount of time with you could be considered plenty, Detective. Believe me." Somewhat to Chloe's surprise, he reached down, lifted her feet off the floor, and set her legs across his lap. When she didn't object, he laid his head back and thought, and his finger slipped into the gap between her pant cuff and the top of her sock to draw random patterns against her ankle. "Well, for a start, there'll probably be some fuss about getting Trixie back into school—not that she needs it—"

"Wait, hold on," Chloe ordered, sitting up a little. "Getting who back into school?"

"Your child? Short thing with the pigtails? Center of your universe? Is this not ringing any bells?"

"You called her Trixie," Chloe accused. "You never call her Trixie. You call her everything under the sun that she will answer to except Trixie."

"Yes, well," said Lucifer evasively. "I mean . . . truth be told, the little parasite has rather grown on me, these last . . . Well, look at it this way, Detective. Imagine you had been endowed with a face so uniquely horrific that it made angels recoil, demons cower, and humans go mad. And you lived with it for, oh, six or seven thousand years, but who's counting . . . and then, into that mix, throw the words, That's so cool, do it again."

He looked genuinely embarrassed, which said much more than his words did about how deeply Trixie's immediate, unquestioning, delighted acceptance had touched him. It was something even Chloe, his partner, had been unable to give him.

Rather than prod at his clear discomfort by pointing out that he was clearly the biggest softie in Los Angeles County, Chloe said, "She did that to me, too, you know. When I finally told her about Hot Tub High School. I was so afraid that . . . I don't know, that she'd be ashamed of me, or angry that I'd left her open to all this teasing from her friends at school. I was ready to grovel, to beg for forgiveness . . . and, it turned out, she'd already seen the whole thing. Twice. The nude scene hadn't even pinged on her radar. She just went on and on about how funny it was when I puked in Tom Brandt's hair."

"That is one of my favorite bits," Lucifer agreed, provoking Chloe to laughter again. "I'm genuinely curious now . . . is this preternatural resiliency of hers something she inherited from you? The way you're immune to charm, is she immune to shock?"

"I don't think so. I think it's just part of her personality. But immune or not, I think she's had enough shock for a while. So if Dan and I can get her back into school tomorrow, get her back into a regular routine . . ."

"And everything back to normal? Just like it was?"

Chloe sighed, thinking about crime bosses and devil faces, chainsaws and abused children, the fragile tenderness of her right arm, the warm, gentle finger drawing figure eights on the skin of her leg. "I don't think we get to go back to normal," she admitted. "But I think I left normal behind the day I met you, Lucifer Morningstar."

When Maze finally got home from Lux, she found them still on the sofa, with Chloe's legs across Lucifer's lap and Lucifer's hand wrapped around Chloe's ankle, both fast asleep.